Evil cities

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Thalric
Rising Hero
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Evil cities

Post by Thalric » 16 May 2020 22:10

I would say this is as much a suggestion as it is a complaint.

I find that the amount og cities in the realms with a "good-aligned" population is vastly higher than the opposite.
Sure, Flotsam, Balifor, Sanction and Minas Morgul.. but the 3 first aren't really areas with anything in them, and the last one is inaccessible to good-aligned people.
I want cities where I, as a good-aligned player, can go and kill smaller stuff and feel like I am ending corruption and tyrrany.
Without, of course, having to risk my alignment, my prestige, my guild, my abilities and so on and on.

And here we also come to the complaints part.
Because, why are most good-aligned guilds so heavily restricted from killing anything good, while evil guilds mostly don't give a flying fuck wether you're damned or holy?
I find it horribly unbalanced that evils, at this time, can wear darkness and darkvision and then go plowing through good xp in Kabal, without really being in danger, even if fighting enemies bigger than themselves.
Sure, I can do that too... but 10 or 20 kills in, I'll be down to neutral and it just goes downward from there.
So, I want the opposite.

I also want evil guilds to restrict their members more... because, the way I know Takhisis, she doesn't strike me as one who is totally lenient with how her armies live...
And I want it to be as easy to become good-aligned as it is to become evil-aligned.
The current system is built upon some moronic system saying that "if you kill people, you're evil".. or whatever. In which case you have to kill very evil things to be less evil... makes no sense and is braindead.
I would like that changed, thank you.

And then, of course, the obvious things...
Why did Ghastly Keep, Terel trolls and Mithas trolls all become neutral, all of a sudden? Which evil person whined so much that it was changed? Undeads and trolls are per every fantasy genre definition evil. Quite evil, in fact.
To give evil players the option to kill all the myth top tier hunting grounds, and good players only half... where is the balance in that? Aren't evil players having it easy enough already?

Ohh.. and last thing in this rant.
Layman guilds shouldn't be able to use specials at the same time as they cast spells. Certainly not healing spells.

TL:DR
I want ALL these things looked at and changed. :evil:

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nils
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Re: Evil cities

Post by nils » 17 May 2020 01:35

You'll find your evil cities/locations several places - dark elves, ogres, legion of darkness, haradrims, goblin caves, barrow downs, trollshaws, mithas, the cellar of the tower of arms and the list goes on.

Just because you don't know where they are, doesn't mean they don't exist.

But yes, you do have a point in regards to alignment, and I have had the same complaint for years. I am of the mind that alignment is a matter of how you play your character, not your grinding habits. Considering it's a game and not the real world I see no reason why whoever you kill dictates your alignment. I've suggested that alignment should be electable at character creation, subject to change upon death in a similar matter as race changes.

As it is now, 'evils' can (and do) kill everything while 'goodies' have to opt out of a lot of good hunting grounds and thus playing a good character in the current system can feel more difficult/restricting. That said, in a philosophical/existential way of thinking, 'evil' doesn't care who or what it kills - killing is an inherently evil act, and just because you're evil doesn't make other evil people your friends, quite the contrary.

Lastly, ghastly keep has been neutral from the day it was created. Terel trolls are evil and do affect align, but I admit slower than others. Using darkness as a tool becomes less and less effective when you grow larger. I hardly use it, and if I do it's when grinding 'off areas' for imbues, not growth.
Nil Mortifi Sine Lucre

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Cherek
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Cherek » 17 May 2020 11:32

I can only agree. This is imbalance is problematic, and it is definitely easier to grow big as an evil player. I know Arman wants to redo the alignment system, but it would also be a massive project since so much in the game is tied to the current system. Making evil guilds more alignment-restricted and going through our grinding areas to make undeads and trolls more evil could be one way. But it would likely mean we upset a lot of players in the process...

Thalric
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Thalric » 17 May 2020 14:00

Upset a lot of players?

Stopping to make things balanced because some players will whine that their priveledge is taken away is the most horrible excuse or explanation.

And yes, Nils. I do know of all those places.
But they are not cities.

And yes, of course you don't use darkness. All the myth hunting ground npcs have darkvision.

Thalric
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Thalric » 17 May 2020 14:26

My intention here is not to make the game harder for evil, but making it easier for goodies.
I would like ents and qualinesti elves as good as trolls or undeads are evil. Same +/- value.

As it is now, it seems like good-aligned npcs have value... +100, or whatever.
But evil-aligned npcs have value -2.

So, it takes 50 times (in my little setup calculation) as long, to get from neutral to holy as it does from neutral to damned.
And that is totally insane, flawed and biased.

If you're mega holy, now, it takes perhaps 10 ents or qualinesti elves to be neutral.
But it takes.. 100? 200? dark elves to go the other way?
Ents are trees! How do they even have an alignment? Why are they more "good" than guards in Gont? Or guards in Edoras?

Lower the "become evil" values to match the "become good" values... right there you'd have an alignment system that was balanced.

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Arman
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Arman » 17 May 2020 15:05

Thalric wrote:
17 May 2020 14:26
Lower the "become evil" values to match the "become good" values... right there you'd have an alignment system that was balanced.
We could make changes so that the alignment system uses the same value. Replace one crappy system with another. Although I don't see why we'd want to allow alignments to yo-yo... I don't see that as desirable at all. If anything equalisation would be about making it equally hard to switch. Which would bring up the complaints about unequal grinding locations for different sizes/alignments etc etc.

I personally don't like the existing alignment system. I'd like to change it to something better. But it has to be something better... I hate the idea of a player hunting free-for-all. Players are bad enough policing their own guild themes ("Let's go 'train' the local city trolls or harradrim shall we?") to not have some sort of prestige/alignment/reputation guide rail in place where the guild requires that role be played.
Thalric wrote:
17 May 2020 14:26
My intention here is not to make the game harder for evil, but making it easier for goodies.
If we were to seriously change the alignment system, the focus wouldn't be on making it easier. It would be to make the playing experience richer.

Anfalas
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Anfalas » 17 May 2020 15:35

I actually tracked how long it would take to go from damned to holy and vice versa last summer.

I can't seem to find where I recorded the results.

I seem to recall from damned to holy taking just shy of 4000 barrow wight kills. I think in the 3800-3900 range. These were chosen as most of the community seems to agree they're one of the best mobs for raising alignment. These require someone to be of a decent size to kill. It took me several days to complete this test. I can't remember how many hours I spent but it was significant(several sessions over a period of days, 20 or more hours I would guess).

From holy to damned was around 400 kills of slaves in Kabal and guards in Kabal. The slaves took me from holy to agreeable/trustworthy in less than a minute to kill all 16. The slaves even the smallest of newbies can easily kill them and become evil quickly. All in all, it took maybe 2 hours of grinding extremely good/holy mobs.

I do agree with Nils when he says evil doesn't care about what they kill, they just simply do. Also, most would likely agree it makes sense that it would be easier to go from good to evil vs evil to good. However, this is a fantasy game, and not reality. Not everything has to make sense. I would suggest changing the scale of the formula from evil to good be the same as good to evil. This would be a relatively easy change and at least level out the disparity between "adjusting" ones alignment. Yes, it is just as crappy as Arman just pointed out, but at least balances it in the current situation until a better solution can be implemented.

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Cherek
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Cherek » 17 May 2020 16:21

Thalric wrote:
17 May 2020 14:00
Upset a lot of players?

Stopping to make things balanced because some players will whine that their priveledge is taken away is the most horrible excuse or explanation.
I never said we would not change things because it would upset players, but I definitely think the effect on playerbase morale must be taken into account when making changes.

If the benefit outweighs the negativity it will cause, absolutely, let's do it. But I think first we should explore options on how to make the needed change _without_ ending up with a mailbox full of letters from angry players. If it can't be done, then fine, I won't shy away from making a change if I truly belive it makes the game better, even if it causes a lot of upset players, but if we can have both happy players and a better game, that's the best solution.

Sure, we could change all trolls and undeads to be damned, that would definitely be more thematic, logical, and give the goodies better grinding options, but it will undoubtedly cause a lot of anger as well, and I think we should not ignore that. Now, you already suggested a solution. If we make the above change and also upgrade some evil only areas as "replacements", it would probably both keep players (relatively) happy and be a step towards solving the problem.

However, evils will still go to GK, TT, Trollshaws, Mithas, etc, unless we change the evil guilds to punish the "wrong" align as much as goodies are punished, and also make going from evil to good and good to evil equally hard. Yes, in "reality" it probably should take more good acts to become good, and fewer evil acts to become evil, which is probably why things are like they are, but in this case I think the benefit of a more fair game would outweigh that "reality".

Doing all of the above would likely balance things out reasonably well between good and evil grinding, and I would not stand in the way of the wizard(s) who wanted to make it happen. Obviously depending on what Arman thinks, since ultimately these things are his call.

Nerull
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Nerull » 18 May 2020 02:05

If the objective is to keep it balanced then alignment must scale the same for both factions. Furthermore, asymmetric design or not, xp-footprint for grinders for both factions must also be equal.

This gives the opportunity of goodies grinding in goodiegrinders with no penalties and vice versa
, with the option to grind on opposite turfs with equal penalties.

This option requires a lot more grinders to be created and balanced in order to secure equal growthrate opportunity. If not, the game as a whole favours one side, which is not a good gamedesign.

There are alternatives, such as simply to drop alignment increase/decrease when killing, and introduce faction standings, which in turn contain consequences. A simple example: kill haradrims, and gain standing with some faction with the free folk or Gondor, while dropping in favour of faction(s) of the dark lord. Consequences could manifest in decreased efficiency of guild abilities, which would help motivating members of said factions to kill the right stuff. Important to bake in a metaelement here to drive the whip...

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Arman
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Re: Evil cities

Post by Arman » 18 May 2020 04:38

Nerull wrote:
18 May 2020 02:05
There are alternatives, such as simply to drop alignment increase/decrease when killing, and introduce faction standings, which in turn contain consequences. A simple example: kill haradrims, and gain standing with some faction with the free folk or Gondor, while dropping in favour of faction(s) of the dark lord. Consequences could manifest in decreased efficiency of guild abilities, which would help motivating members of said factions to kill the right stuff. Important to bake in a metaelement here to drive the whip...
That is pretty much the system i would prefer we had.

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